We didn't forget about you but were just incredibly busy with our Gibran Gala and Leadership Days, last week. We love our community and thank all those who joined us to commemorate AAI's 30th anniversary at our Gala and Leadership Days. Over 700 guests attended the Gala, and we could not have done any of it without you. Thank you so much for being with us last week to celebrate our heritage, our achievements, and to reflect on the progress that has been made, and the work that still needs to be done. We also want to thank all of our wonderful awardees Salma Hayek Pinault, Lawrence Wright, John Sexton and Michael Baroody for their leadership and for embodying the spirit and tradition of the Arab American poet Kahlil Gibran.

In what is likely to be the most complex campaign to earn a GOP presidential nomination, Sen. Paul must tread a very thin line appealing to both his libertarian base as well as a much broader GOP base.

The plight of Palestinians living in Syria has been all but ignored since the start of the conflict. As international delegations headed to Kuwait for the third annual donor conference on Syria, UNRWA warned that the emergency fund for Palestinians was dangerously low.

Tea Party luminary Ted Cruz charismatically launched his bid for the presidency this week. And boy, the champion Princeton debater raised the bar high for those who will follow, even if he did immediately hit his head on that very same bar upon resuming his Senatorial duties. Ted Cruz put together quite a show for the 10,000 Liberty University students who were required to attend.

The Israeli elections wrapped up on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu securing a fourth term. His public shift to the right in the days ahead of the election, declaring there would be no Palestinian state under his watch, and his racist insult on election day against Israel's Arab citizens, "right-wing rule is in danger, Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations," worked as designed.

While Republicans have railed against the Obama Administration and Democrats for their lack of bipartisan efforts in the past, it seems that there are certain instances in which casting bipartisan efforts aside is appropriate. Senator McConnell seemed to get a little ahead of himself last week after he bypassed the committee process and attempted to bring the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 up for a vote before the March 24th deadline for a political framework.

We all knew that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approached the podium at the 2015 American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference, he was bound to deliver controversial comments with the typical helping of condescension and props. The Prime Minister deployed a truly staggering litany of outmoded orientalist language at Monday's Conference. Bibi stated that the region finds itself consumed by “medieval barbarism” and described a "dark and savage, and desperate Middle East" where women experience “repression, enslavement and...